1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a technical field of an information processing apparatus, an information processing method and an information processing program, or more in particular to a technical field of an information processing apparatus connected to a single bus system together with other information processing apparatuses, an information processing program for the information processing apparatuses and an information processing method executed by the information processing apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, IEEE1394 standard has been widely applied as a standard of a method for connecting an information reproducing apparatus such as a player for reproducing the audio information recorded in an optical disc, for example, and an amplifier unit (an amplifier) for amplifying the reproduced audio information and outputting it to a speaker or the like.
The IEEE1394 standard is officially referred to as “IEEE Std. 1394–1995 IEEE Standard for a High Performance Serial Bus”, which is a standard used when the information reproducing apparatus and the amplifier are connected to each other by a serial bus constituted of a wire.
Next, an outline of the IEEE1394 standard will be explained in general terms. The IEEE1394 standard (hereinafter referred to simply as the serial bus standard) stipulates that a plurality of types of information processing apparatuses (hereinafter referred to simply as nodes) including the information reproducing apparatus and the amplifier described above are connected to each other by a serial bus, and information of a plurality of channels is transmitted between the nodes by time division.
According to this serial bus standard, the control information is transmitted at high speed from an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer so that electric home appliances or audio/visual devices can be controlled centrally on the one hand and the audio information can be transmitted between the nodes both rapidly and accurately.
Assume that a plurality of nodes are connected to a serial bus based on the serial bus standard. As viewed from one of the nodes to the other plurality of nodes on the serial bus, the particular one node is connected with only one serial bus while a plurality of the nodes are existent on the particular serial bus.
When information from another node is selectively input to a given node, for example, the another node from which the information is to be input is required to be selected on the particular given node.
When information having an attribute not permitted to transmit by the serial bus standard is input from another node, on the other hand, the nodes are required to be connected to each other physically using a line for the particular information separate from the serial bus.
According to the serial bus standard described above, assume that another node is selected on one node and that a multiplicity of nodes exist on one serial bus system. In such a case, the problem is posed that a complex procedure must be followed to search for the desired node and input the information selectively.
This problem leads to another problem that the complexity is further increased by the necessity of switching the physical line connection different from the serial bus when the information having an attribute not permitted to transmit on the aforementioned serial bus standard is input to one node from another node.